Zetta Elliott's blog

expert eyes

I did my 16th school visit this morning and got soaked coming and going…came home, put on some dry, comfy clothes, and made a cup of ginger tea. Checked my email and found a Google alert that led me to The Book Smugglers fabulous joint review of Ship of Souls! Here’s a peek:

WOW. D’s journey in Ship of Souls is breathtaking in its gravity and heartache. While, from a plotting perspective, the actual story proper is a rather small, contained thing, it is not without its taste of the fantastic, drawing a portal between the current world and the ghosts of the past through the magic of a very special park and its historical significance. Do you know what I love the most about Zetta Elliott’s work? In both A Wish After Midnight and in Ship of Souls, Elliott effortlessly weaves history – a painful, grim, but true history – with fantasy. In this novel, she explores one of the first major battles of the British-American Revolutionary war. In 1776, Prospect Park (along Flatbush Ave) was the battleground for British and Hessian soldiers as they fought the Continental Army (led by George Washington) – and this iconic battle serves as a key point for the story. To do this, to add on top of the historical commentary also one that explores the issues of race, gender, and religion in contemporary Brooklyn, this is no small feat. But Zetta Elliott does it all without making the story didactic or dry, by making these threads more than just a Message or underlying theme – each of these facets of identity are a part of our main characters (D, Keem and Nyla).

You can read the entire review here. It’s one thing to have kids tell you they love your book, but it’s something else entirely to have two experts in the field of YA SFF give your book a rave review! I was in such a good mood that I didn’t even fuss when I went back out into the rain to keep an appointment I’d made with a student and he didn’t bother to show up…